NeoFetch
One of the most valuable CLI tools that I used to use and always have installed when I install a Linux distribution is neofetch as it provides general details on my current system to me whenever I need to check it.
Running neofetch on the terminal will show the following for my current system.
Why change neofetch?
The reason why I’m moving away from neofetch is because I found out recently that as of April 26th 2024 neofetch will not receive any more updates. So if you upgrade your current operating system the neofetch output will not be match the new system version.
FastFetch
The next popular alternative to neofetch is fastfetch so I decided to switch to it and install it on my current PC. Information on fastfetch can be found on their main GitHub page.
They even give reasons at the bottom of the GitHub page of why you use fastfetch instead of neofetch.
Scrolling down even further you can see a chart representing the growth of fastfetch and recently it’s seen a surge which is likely due to neofetch stopping support.
How to setup in Linux
These steps show you how to install fastfetch for Ubuntu, for other distributions check the releases page in the FastFetch GitHub account.
Download the .deb file using the wget command.
wget https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch/releases/download/2.12.0/fastfetch-linux-amd64.deb
Use apt or whichever package manager you use to install the file.
sudo apt install ./fastfetch-linux-amd64.deb
After installation try running the fastfetch to check it.
fastfetch
You should see system information similar to the following screenshot.
When compared to the above information provided by neofetch there is actually more hardware information provided at the bottom of the list.
How to setup in MacOS
This will require brew to be installed.
Use the brew install command.
brew install fastfetch
After installation you can use the fastfetch command.
fastfetch
Here is an example of how it shows.
